


SHADOW x SONG

by Happy_Cow



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Lovecraftian, Major Character Injury, Medical Trauma, Sex in chapter two, Soft Ben Solo, Submissive Rey (Star Wars), Suicidal Thoughts, Switching Perspectives, Untagged
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23318584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Happy_Cow/pseuds/Happy_Cow
Summary: AFter a traumatic accident leaves Rey with life-altering consequences, she finds hope in a strange, strange man...
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 18
Kudos: 22





	1. ERROR

**Author's Note:**

> (i didn't... think i would write again after a year of writers block, but i m in q u a r a n t i n e)

**“H#Y** ,” the wriggling lump of flesh burbles.

“SE$##* ‘&(*KL, 9$jJSLJ0*&EKF?”

“B47* W3(9GJ DO 3## , JK!”

“WHSKT H## 3** KTH’N, R.Y?”

... If I _really_ pay attention, I can make out the gist of what they’re saying. So long as I stick to myself, it’s alright when they talk amongst themselves. It’s when they address me directly that I am forced to pretend. These are my ‘ _friends_ ’, apparently, after all.

I make some noise of assent. They stare at me, before burbling something that I can’t quite catch and moving on from the topic at hand.

Ever since the accident, I’ve been living in a waking hell inside my own head. I wish it were a nightmare, but if it is... nothing short of a suicide has woken me up. And I haven’t left the planet. Against what all of my senses report back to me, this is still the same country, the same city, the same cafe I visit with my friends. The rheumy bubble warbling at the corner of the wall squawks about football. If anything, I’ve become an alien.

“R.Y!”

The one that said my name just now, sitting to the left, is ‘Finn’. He was my best friend, a very handsome man of color. He saved my life, he inspired me to go to college and leave a terrible place. From my peripheral, I can see his clouded eye peeking out from his protective shell. I can accidentally catch a glimpse of the maggots that writhe along his secret, fetal body. 

“R.Y?”

I can feel my lips stretch into what I hope is a smile, but is more likely a grimace. “Wherever you guys want to go,” I say through clenched teeth. The effort forces an inhale of breath that tastes like raw sewage on my tongue. 

Again, it seems I produce the wrong answer. The attention of the other two shifts to me: ‘Poe’ and ‘Rose’. My skin crawls; it’s like I’m being watched by my pervert foster father again.

_**”YIEEECH!”**_ With a scream, ‘Rose’ _contracts_. Her body expunges a burst of milky pus. Some of it gets onto me, and blots into the ‘coffee’ they set in front of me.

“BL&55 UOW.” 

This is about as much as I can take. I blurt out some flimsy excuses, while fishing in my pocket, my purse. It hurts to breathe, so I don’t. The air tastes like an overflowed toilet, and there’s a shivering tumor that begins to shriek at the table over. I grab whatever money is in my bag and throw it on the table. One of Poe’s feelers whips out to catch my arm and I slap it off. I can’t get out of the door fast enough.

. . .

Finn, Rose, and Poe Dameron exchange glances with each other. Next to Rey’s near-full cup of coffee is a crumpled twenty-dollar bill, hastily thrown onto the table in her wake. Rey, who lived on dollar store ramen and preyed on the campus Goodwill...

So far, it’s remained a thing best left unsaid, but now it’s apparent: ever since the accident, Rey has changed. She’s lost even more weight and shadows linger beneath her eyes. Except for class, she barely seems to leave her house. When they go out as a group, Rey looks like she’s on the verge of throwing up. 

Poe gazes after her, at the door to the cafe, and unbeknownst to him Finn and Rose exchange heartbroken glances: Poe had confessed his feelings to Rey a week before the accident. Finn raises a hand and claps Poe on the shoulder; Poe jumps in his seat, before giving a rogueish smile as he shrugs his best friend off.

“I’m fine, man,” Poe says, running a hand beneath his nose. Poe is a popular man on campus; he cuts an attractive figure, easy to talk to and a promising baseball player. Despair is an unfamiliar emotion for him to process, so he decides to conceal it from his friends.

“We’re sorry,” Finn says, shaking his head. He and Rose were the ones who introduced them, even pushed them together. 

“The accident was really hard for Rey,” Rose confesses. She knows that Rey will hate her for this admission, but it’s true. Rose took it upon herself to bring Rey’s underwear to the hospital. Rose saw incredible moments of weakness from her friend: it seemed like her personality changed daily, from gratefulness to anger to grief. “It’s not... Don’t take it personally, Poe.”

“I know, and I don’t.” Poe tries to smile, but it comes off strained. He drums his long, brown fingers on the table. 

Finn sets his fist down on the table. He eyes the twenty dollar bill and says, “You think Rey’s gonna want her exact change back?” 

Rose snorts. “Past-Rey would’ve bust through that door again to get her seventeen-something back.” She brings her tissue to her nose and blows into it. 

Then, she says, “Look. First, she just lost her mom. Second, none of us live with Rey, and she’s always been independent, so she’s probably still trying to live the way she used to.”

The image of Rey sitting curled in a ball on the bench outside of classes superimposes itself on their vision: pink in the face, out-of-breath, listless... 

“... I wish,” says Finn, shaking his head, “that she would’ve just called. Any one of us. Like if she needed a ride or something, or just groceries.” 

“But it’s not her way,” says Rose. 

They lapse into a retrospective silence, until Poe at last speaks: “So... she doesn’t like feeling that she’s a burden.”

“That’s exactly it.” “Yup.”

“... Shit,” mutters Poe. He runs a hand through the back of his hair. “Poor kid. I think I’ll make it up to her.”

  
. . .

  
The pathway is lined with acres of spoiled meat writhing with maggots. If I keep my shirt over my nose and focus on my shoes, I can stand to breathe. Even if the route is mutilated beyond all recognition, I know by memory where my house is. 

I glance up. ‘My house.’ When my mother decided that she finally wanted to have something to do with me, she brought me to what was virtually paradise. A little single family home, with a porch and a manicured lawn in front. In the winter, the leaves on the tree outside turned orange and fell off, and I’d need a winter coat. It wasn’t enough to make me forgive her, but it was enough to make me at least pretend to. On the outside.

Now these, too, are taken away from me — not just my mother, but the home that she gave me. I grab ahold of the railing and pull myself up the porch steps, ignoring the termites buzzing in my ear, ignoring the stink of fungal rot in the wood. 

I open the front door and pull it shut behind me, shutting out that terrible world. 

It’s a little quieter inside.

I can hear myself breath in shallow gasps.

A sweeter sound: solid, eager footsteps. “Rey?” he says, his voice soft and nasal and sweet. 

He steps out from the kitchen, tall and pale. He has a long face with proportionate features: a patrician’s nose, a plush mouth. He wears a long white shirt and high waisted pants, with thick thighs. His long hands are held before him, but he stops just a few feet away. (I think he wants to grab me, haha.)

“How was your day?” he asks politely. I have this system of taking off my shoes now: I set my back against the wall and ease off my sneakers, one at a time. (The therapist said that maybe it would be easier for me to wear my shoes inside, but I’d die if I had to track the filth from outdoors into my house.)

“Hi Kylo. It was okay,” I reply. I stumble away from the foyer in my socks, towards him. “I met with my ‘friends’, but...”

“... Ah.” His dark eyes gaze into mine, and I catch a thread of gold in the iris. Jeesh, but he is... Wordlessly, he spreads his arms. My heart rate quickens as I let myself fall into him, whump side-effect and all. His scent is clean laundry, and musk. My head fogs up, erasing all the pain of today.

“Are you hungry, Rey? I tried a new recipe,” he explains eagerly. He releases me, sliding his palm into my hand so that he can drag me to the dining room. He pulls a seat out for me like a gentleman, before he retreats into the kitchen.

A filtered light somehow passes through the window. When I first came ‘home’, I had trouble just sitting in any room: to eat, sleep, or rest in the midst of so much filth. It was Kylo who suggested that we paint over the walls; if we found a palette that appealed to me, then I’d adjust to living here again, was his theory. So I bought as many brushes and buckets as I could carry back from the hardware store (testing the pins in my spine in the process). When Kylo first began, he carefully painted around the windows — until I took my brush and made a streak right over the glass.

There’s nothing outside that I’d want to look at anyway. The whorls on the glass are much nicer to look at. I’m sure the neighbors suspect something, so I leave the painted curtains down for most of the day. It’s the little things that keep me from an involuntary psych hold!

Kylo returns with a steaming plate in his hands, which he sets before me.

“It’s ‘spaghetti’,” he says stiffly. “It’s the bottle of sauce in the fridge and some boiled noodles, like I saw on the television, so that it is ‘al-dente’.” The reluctant pride in his voice is fucking adorable. Then, his expression falters. 

I look at him and down at the meal that he made me. I’m certain that he’s followed the television to the T, and that the Prego sauce is Prego sauce. I take the fork and wind a strand along the tines, before putting it in my mouth. The very fact that Kylo made it for me overcomes the very taste, and the feel of it in my mouth. 

His brow furrows. He sits himself down on the seat beside me and folds his hands over the table. An air of disappointment sets down on his broad shoulders. “I-I can eat it,” I insist, and to prove it I push a forkful into my mouth. I have plenty of exercise on eating to live and not living to eat. He says nothing.

“Kylo, did you try any of it?” I ask. I twirl some more around the fork, and proffer it to his mouth. 

This snaps him out of his reverie. “I... I ate already,” he says, leaning away from the fork. 

I’ve never seen Kylo eat. I’ve watched him stand before a stove, pondering its contents, but he doesn’t eat these meals. I don’t think he’s poisoning me or else I’d be dead by now. If I push him enough, he shuts down and suddenly I’m nothing. I’m nobody. It makes me feel sad... Sometimes, I dream about making him breakfast or taking him out to dinner. 

“Alright,” I concede. “So long as you don’t get an eating disorder on my part...”

He smiles at that, then quickly slaps his hand over his mouth. I ask him what’s so funny, but he won’t say, even after I clean off the plate...

.

As a matter of good sleep hygiene, I take a shower every night so that I’m clean for bed. Kylo sets a plastic chair in the shower stall for most days, but on Friday nights I get an oatmeal bath. It’s very nice.

“Are you alright?” Kylo calls, from the other room.

The water sloshes as I twist around in the tub. “Yeah!” I call back. Worry-wart.

I sink into the bath, body weightless. Steam wafts off the surface of the water. By chance, my gaze wanders to the doorway, and I see a wide eye staring back at me. 

The water covers my chest, but I also palm my tits for better concealment.

“Kylo?”

“... Yes.”

God, what an absolute boy. “... Can you wash my back?” Do you want to wash my back, Mr. Kylo Ren?

The door swings open and allows the man in, before he pushes it shut to prevent the heat escaping. He makes my bathroom tiny and warm.

I push myself from the end of the tub and lean away, feeling a tug on my lower lumbar. He reaches over me to grab the loofah, softens it in the water, then lathers it with soap. When it finally touches my back, it’s warm relief on my exposed, goosepimpled skin. 

“Have you lathered your hair?”

I make a sound of affirmative. I think he huffs through his nose. For some reason he’s just fascinated with my hair and putting in as many scrunchies he can get his feelers on. Not that I dislike his fingers on my scalp, but I don’t want to sit in this tub until I’m a soaked raisin like Maz Kanata.

“Should I rinse you off?”

I nod. The shower head is removed from its holder, and he turns the taps so that a gentle rain showers over my head and down my eyelids. He aims the warm spray on my back, and the plug blorps loudly so that the soapy water can drain. 

When the shower squeaks shut, a fluffy towel wipes down my face. I’m afraid that if I open my eyes, the ‘towel’ will be a moldy rag. The water droplets are wiped from my hair, my back, and my chest, before he reaches beneath me and lifts me out of the tub. 

My arms wrap around his neck, and I breathe in his scent, while he carries me to my bedroom. The walls and the window are painted in shades of blue and green, and they shift before my broken brain like a forest of seaweed. I feel safe from the predators lurking beyond. Some long ago ancestor, who had yet to crawl out of the sea, really loves our interior decorating.

Kylo sets me down in my bed, and I catch his sleeve before he can pull away. He looks down at me.

I know exactly what I want, but the words lodge in my throat. “S... Stay, with me?” is what comes out.

His mouth moves, and he glances away, past the shadowy margins of the room. I know that sometimes, he’s busy at night. I think he has other friends, maybe a whole other family in the real world that he doesn’t reveal to me, maybe a wife or kid. I don’t care. 

His Adam’s apple bobs. He wordlessly takes out my pajamas and helps me dress for bed. Something invisible writhes against my ribs, before the nice, clean shirt slides over it. Then, Kylo moves to his side, and the mattress squeaks under his knee. 

The light turns off, but I can sense him unwind beside me: placing his head on the pillow, the rest of him extending stiff and reluctant on top of the blankets. 

Imagine: the most beautiful creature in Hell, crawling into bed beside me. 

It’s not an overstatement to say, that without him, I would probably have killed myself by now.

I grope his substantial chest with my hands, and then bury my face into him. I get a contact high just from breathing his scent in. Kylo stiffens, but he doesn’t complain (he never does). I catch his arms in my hands and wrap them around me. 

Goodnight, Kylo. “G’night, Kylo.”

“... Goodnight, Rey,” he answers. His breath tickles my hair.

I love you, Kylo.

“... I know.”


	2. MEMORY LEAK

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hewwo <##

Dr. Amilyn Holdo folds her long fingers over her clipboard. Her hair is a lustrous shade of lavender, cut into a fringe over her forehead. She’s been called The Duchess behind her back: some find her height imposing, others her way of dress or her personality. None of these people matter, of course.

In front of her sits her long-term patient, an interesting one: Ms. Rey Niima. The Girl Who Lived.

The both of them go through a list of niceties: ‘how are you’, ‘how is school’, ‘how are the friends’. For all intents and purposes, Rey is healed. She responds in complete sentences, she can read the clock on the wall and count down the minutes to when the session ends, and it looks like she’s even begun regaining a little weight in her face. She knows the current date and the current president. No visual or auditory hallucinations.

A foul odor clings to her clothes for an inexplicable reason.

Rey barely makes eye contact with Dr. Holdo, instead training her gaze either to the left of her chair or to the clock on the wall.

“Rey.”

“- _so, I’ve been thinking_ ,” Rey says to the carpeting, “about instead of having these meetings every week, we can have them once every two weeks.”

An electric silence fills the office. What on earth is that smell? Did the girl fall into a grocery dumpster? The doctor shakes her head and sighs. And it shouldn’t bother her, but she catches just a glance at Rey and sees it: a microexpression, a curled lip and a furrowed brow. Rey is disgusted with something; she’s even curled up into a defensive ball, taking up the smallest surface area in the patient’s chair that she can.

“Rey,” says Dr. Holdo, “what you’ve gone through, what you survived, can be called a miracle.” An acute subdural hematoma. The doctor leans in her seat, hoping her words would pierce that self-imposed veil. She hopes a sort of confession would be enough to yield a mutual answer. “The method the hospital used, ‘bacta gel’, was in its experimental stages when it was used on you.”

Rey’s eyes flicker to hers, then to the wall opposite the window. In the window, white clouds scud across a perfect blue sky. The opposite wall is beige. The very first question that Rey has ever chosen to speak for this session comes: “I thought you were all hush-hush about bacta before... Can you tell me, were there others it was used on? People?”

“Yes,” Dr. Holdo says, looking for a way to reveal enough without opening herself or the hospital to a lawsuit. Its survival rate for stemming subdural hematomas specifically has been 0.5%. Within that, Rey was the only one to come out sapient: eating without aid, speaking, and cancer-free as a bonus. “A few people; as it stands, you are our most successful case.”

Pain crosses Rey’s expression. “Can I... can I talk to any of them?” she implores.

Damn. “I can make some inquiries,” the doctor says, affecting a tone to brook no more questions. “Rey, I know you want to move on. I can sympathize with that. But there are so many unknown factors regarding your condition, it would be prudent for someone to monitor you for the foreseeable future.”

Wrong answer. “But I’m fine!” Rey cries, bolting up from her seat. Her own outburst shocks her, so she folds back into the seat. “I’m sorry. I’m well, Dr. Holdo,” she chokes. This time, she gazes earnestly into Dr. Holdo’s eyes, her green ones into Amilyn’s lavender.

“Rey.”

“Yes, Doctor?” Her eye twitches.

“I want you to trust me,” she says.

“I do trust you,” Rey deadpans.

“I would like to see you twice a week, again,” and Rey’s lip twists in misery, “but for now, our once a week is just fine.”

“... Yes, doctor.”

.

When Rey stumbles out of the hospital, she walks and walks until she’s out of its sights so that she might wretch onto the side of the road. Her throat spasms and burns, forcing out stomach acid. An obese phallus slithers past and cackles, and her ears make out the word ‘bitch’.

She feels detached from herself. Going to the hospital is always a repulsive, traumatic adventure, but once it’s over she feels euphoric. Rey feels so light, that she could surely float home, but alas she’s only human. Instead, she holds her shirt over her nose and takes the crowded, fetid, shit-flooded subway home. Kylo will make her all clean and happy.

.

Rey — I — remember the moment after the accident as voices in the dark. There was a doctor to talk to me in a low, calm voice, and she asked me all sorts of questions about who I am and where I was born and where I live to figure out if my brain was still functional. Once I deserved the answer, the doctors informed me of the death of my mother, one Kira Niima At first, I thought they were lying, or grossly mistaken and I only had to see her I just had to see her we were in the car and

_Did the power go out?_ I asked. I waved my hands in front of me and blinked my eyes, but there wasn’t even the shape of them. Tears came to my eyes, but when I wiped them away I felt no blindfold in front of them, only the texture of my eyelashes.

Only then did the doctor tell me, in a low and calm voice, that I was blind.

_Corticol blindness_ , the doctor said. She said maybe it’d come back. Then she went away.

Finn, Rose, and Poe would visit after class and for the weekends. They snuck in outside food, like pizza or soda. Or they would turn on the tv and watch it, trying to include me. Rose was the one who helped me understand that Kira was gone; Rose herself lost her sister, Paige, only a year ago. I remember holding Rose in that hospital room, the both of us weeping. By helping me, Rose reopened some of her own wounds. I figured that I would always be grateful to her for that.

Then my vision returned.

I should thank myself lucky that I woke up blinded at first. If I woke up like this, I would’ve thought I ended up in a circle of Hell. I would’ve screamed myself hoarse and gone insane, maybe attacking some hapless nurses trying to herd me back into the gurney. But, no, those monsters next to my bed were my friends. Those vomit-covered polyps were my doctors.

Of all the human senses, sight is the emperor. The things I saw became reality. The food that my friends snuck in smelled and tasted like waste, the voices I heard began to warble and burp. The air became putrid. I stopped eating. I began to think about ways to fix this problem: maybe by blinding myself, or killing myself. I imagined my future: spending my life alone, shunning human contact, or getting locked up in an asylum, or taking pills that’ll melt my brain.

I drifted listlessly in and out of consciousness, willing each day to pass. There was nothing to look forward to. Nothing to do anymore. I preferred the night, because at least then everything could be hidden again.

In the dark, the streetlights cast shadows over the room so that it’s mutilation was barely visible. I would watch this for hours and imagine what would happen if I could wake up well again. Everything in my life had been going right; I had food, a home, my friends, my university, even a chance at love. Then this happens... I would do anything to be well and normal, again.

In the peripheral of the room was total darkness where the light did not go. There was nothing to see there, but one night, let’s say some prey animal’s instinct sensed movement. I glanced up, and looked into the dark.

His face materialized before my eyes, long and pale in the light as if carved from marble. It had been so long. It had been so long since I had seen a human face. He was the only person that I had seen in months, and in that moment, his beauty devastated me.

He took long, slow steps towards me, until he loomed over my head. His features blurred, as though he were something intransigent, a spirit or a ghost.

He opened his perfect mouth, and said, “Hello,” in a voice without squawks or discordant wailing. Dark hair framed his face.

My mind had been in neutral for so long: gears stripped, belts whirred, but nothing needed to stick until now. I parroted him: “Hello.” My eyes burned.

The entire room faded away. For a moment, I wholeheartedly believed that I was cured by the sight of this man. I could’ve died happily with my last vision being his face.

After a moment, he stepped away. “You’re not afraid,” he muttered underneath his breath. “Strange. There’s nothing to do if you’re not afraid.”

“Excuse me.”

His eyes narrowed into pinpricks.

My voice shook in the dry funnel of my throat: “Who are you?”

The question held him there. He answered, “Kylo Ren.”

He told me that he was an emissary of the Supreme Leader, of the First Order. This hospital was one of the top in the nation for cutting edge research for rare diseases. The man simply grew bored of guided tours and hospital boards, and decided to explore the place himself.

Then he listened patiently while I explained why I was there, too. But I didn’t tell him about my condition; I didn’t trust him not to tell the orderlies about me.

“Rey,” he said at last. “You ... I have been taking your sleeping hours from you.” He took a step backwards towards the door.

Panic. The stitches in my back stung as I reached for him. I cried out. Sinew wrapped around my waist and pulled me flush against the bed, and beside me was Kylo.

His eyes had blown to large, black pits and I felt fear. My throat clicked as I swallowed. When I asked him if he would stay a little longer, his expression softened. Please stay, Kylo Ren. I could finally breathe with him at my bedside.

“I shouldn’t even be here,” he began ruefully, “talking to scavengers.” Then, “perhaps I’ll return someday, if you’re still here.”

“Today?” My fingers clawed the meaty sheets that served as my blanket.

“To-night.” Then he shook his head. “No, another night,” he corrected.

“Tonight,” I demanded. This took him aback. “Please?”

I could see in his face that he was thinking, hard, about his responsibilities to his Supreme Leader or to his own needs: rest, obviously. “Fine,” he sighed, “tonight.”

“Promise?”

His lip curled in annoyance. “My word is my promise,” he bit out.

I reached my hand over the gurney railing and held it out to him. In the light from the window, the scrap of skin on my stick-thin wrist was a map of broken veins. He stared at me like I’d begun to float off my bed. “What are you doing?” he blurted out.

Shaking hands. “You shake hands on a promise, in this country.” I just wanted to touch him.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. He reached out his massive hand, and extended it to me. It was like being handed a gift, and I pulled him toward me with both of my claws. It was a large, perfect, male hand. The bones of his knuckles were prominent in his fist; when he grasped my fingers, I could feel the sinew beneath his unmarked skin.

“You’re a strange one,” he remarked.

His features blurred in the film of tears over my eyes. Thank you, Kylo Ren.

I don’t remember what happened next. I think I fainted from joy, but when I did wake up the next day, it felt like a dream.

.

Kylo returned the night after, and the night after. We mostly talked at first; he didn’t like talking about his past, but he knew a fuckton about theoretical physics. I like math, but not to the point of purity; it has to have a function in the real world, which is why I chose mechanical engineering. He had some sort of genius; he could talk about formulas that calculated the exact position of unequal particles inside of a container and then expanded that to the movement of galaxies in the universe (the universe being the container). It was lucky that we both liked math and cars, or we would’ve spent the whole night monologuing at each other. (Although with that voice, I could eagerly listened to him read a phone book.) Oddly enough, he knew nothing about pop culture or politics; he didn’t know the name of the president.

My hair grew back over the stitches on my scalp, which I let him touch. After that, I began to comb it, and do it in buns.

When I got stronger, I showed off my incredible walking abilities. I also showed off some of the stretches that PT taught me how to do, once the stitches in my back were out. With some prompting, I got Kylo to help me; those big hands on my legs had me acting strange for the day after.

My doctors told my friends that I was making a speedy recovery. I forced myself to eat, and I looked forward to every night. But then there came talks about discharging me from the hospital, about PT and after-care. To a normal person, this would’ve been good news.

When the time came that I told him about leaving, Kylo said, “That is good news.”

I sat on the bed, the putrid covers kicked to the side.

I showed him the cane that I’d need to get around at first, and some of the stretches that the PT told me to do at home in between the biweekly sessions. He walked towards the window while I wondered aloud what classes would be like, since I virtually missed half of a semester.

“Kylo?” I said.

He grunted in reply.

“Will you come visit me?” Because he didn’t move, I scrabbled for the notepad I kept at my bedside, and jotted down in pen in as legible as I could get it: “This is my address. It - it’s kind of a long way from here, forty-five minutes by car but a half-hour by the train, although the walk would be fifteen minutes so it’s about the same time...”

His silence stretched across the room. Night sounds howled from the outside world, muffled by distance and these hospital walls.

“How often,” he said at last, “would you like to see me?”

“You can visit whenever it’s convenient for you,” I blurted out. “I know you’re only free at night and it’s dangerous to go out at that hour, but — I’ll be free after classes and on weekends until I’m ready for work, and and even then...”

He turned his head, watching me from his peripheral. “Every night?” he asked, his voice soft.

Yes. Every night, and the day too if that were okay.

He swayed on the stalks of his legs. “No,” he said.

I waited, for an addendum: a gentle ‘not every night, little one’. None came, so instead I wanted to make one, but my tongue became a dead slab in my mouth. — Please be joking, I begged.

He shook his head, and he turned to face me, softly enunciating each word as if he could brand them onto the surface of my skin: “You’re very ill, little one. They should not let you out; these doctors have failed you.”

The air grew stifling. He knew, somehow. The room grew blurry and I twisted my fingers in my hospital gown. “Don’t tell anyone,” I begged.

“ _You’re the only human that I’ve ever seen in months_ ,” I confessed. “You’re the only thing that I don’t fear, that I don’t _hate_. Please,” I sobbed.

Something brushed my face, something infinitely soft. When I raised my hand, I felt his palm cup my cheek. When I blinked away the tears, I could see the notepad floating up to his face. — I’m going insane.

He asked me if it’s a busy neighborhood, in the city, and I told him that it’s a bit on the outskirts. It’s an old house, but the neighborhood is safe. If he could come in the day, Finn and Poe would drive us all to my house.

He asked me if there are woods nearby; he likes the outdoors. I greatly exaggerated the size of the park nearby, the only trees being three pines beside the playground.

He asked me if he could stay with me and I cried yes, yes of course.

The next day, I was discharged from the hospital. Rose had class, but she collected some spare clothes for me. I looked everywhere for him but he didn’t come. The ride in Finn’s car was hell, but they left me at my doorstep, unmolested. Of course I wasn’t magically healed, and the house I loved was twisted into something ugly and evil. I fiddled my house key into the lock and stepped into the threshold of an empty, mutilated home, and shut the door behind me.

I walked into the foyer, praying in vain for anything familiar.

And there he was.

He sat on the stairwell that led upstairs, body hunched over his knees. His eyes shone gold in the dark.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically the VN 'Song of Saya', just genderbent  
> except Ben is not a loli in the slightest lol

It’s a long walk, but the weather is nice. She drags each leg and drops it in front of her, until the front door swings open and lets her inside. 

“ _Rey_ ,” says the man inside. She places one hand on the wall inside and steps out of her shoes.

“I’m sorry... They said there was a man who fell onto the tracks,” she explained. “I could’ve called a taxi, but I was feeling cheap...” 

His hands grip her arms, steadying her.

Dinner was cold, and the water in the bath would only get luke warm. When Rey told him about the disastrous meeting with Dr. Holdo, his jaw set but he had no comment. 

It is not what he wants to hear. He told her to stop seeing Dr. Holdo and the hospital altogether; his opinion of her doctors has only deteriorated since. Rey refused him, therefore Kylo refuses to understand her reason, and now this day is ruined for the both of them.

Instead of taking her to bed, he leaves her in the living room and then she can hear the hiss of water and dishes clanking together. When she tiptoes into the kitchen, she sees him, standing before the sink. His arms are folded across his chest, while dishes run themselves beneath the gushing water and clatter into the washing machine. This flaw in her reality is a punch to her stomach; it reminds her of just how broken she is. 

What if it spread to Kylo?

What if one day, Kylo becomes hideous to her? 

Would these feelings stop? 

Rey watches him, the way his hair falls over his broad shoulders; the defined muscles along the curve of his back; the way his silhouette tapers down to his narrow waist, then flairs to encompass his thick thighs. But these are _outward_ things. 

Kylo is compassionate, and thoughtful. He makes her meals and draws her baths. Affection is not something that comes easy to him, but he accepts hers and tries to return it, as lonely as she is. He is reluctant to accept any praise, but Kylo Ren is more than worthy of love. 

But, thinking about these things isn’t a healthy exercise for Rey. Electricity runs up her the soles of her feet to the apex of her own twig thighs; she arches on her heels, like a marionette yanked up by her strings. 

Kylo lifts his head, and turns toward her. 

“Uh,” Rey croaks. She palms the wall for support and tries to pull herself back to ground zero. “Hello...”

He approaches her soundlessly, absorbing her personal space. Her breathing shallows. She notices just how big his feet are compared to hers.

“Rey,” he says, “are you alright?”

Rey bobs her head.

He raises a hand and runs a knuckle over her cheek, forcing her to look up at him. His eyes are black discs. “You can’t lie to me,” he says.

Rey brushes off his hand and retreats up the darkened stairwell. “Goodnight, Kylo,” she calls down.

“Rey?” he calls. She can hear him moving up the stairs. Rey halts, suddenly, and looks backwards to see his pale face inches from hers. The nature of her agnosia gives Kylo these _unreal_ dimensions; his skin glows white in darkness, and his eyes smolder gold or black. Now he’s long and tall, so that he has one foot on the ground floor and the rest of him is stretched out vaguely over the stairs beneath her. It should be frightening. It used to be frightening.

Rey leans down, until her lips graze his cool, taut skin.

“G’night,” she chirps, before turning and bolting upstairs.

.

Rey brushes her teeth and dries her hair, plainly ignoring the tall shadow staring at her from the crack in the doorway. The coy act bites her in the ass in her bedroom: she tries to pull her shirt over her head, before getting a kink in her Jenga-tower of a spine. Some distressed squeaking summons a second pair of hands to free her from the confines of the shirt.

Rey crosses her arms over her bare chest, her face flushed. 

He frowns disapprovingly at her, before taking the shirt from her. It’s then that she hears this: “Why do you do that?” His back is towards her, so he’s asking the dresser drawer he pulled open. 

“Do what?” she mutters.

He picks out a long, grey shirt, before returning to her side. His eyes are lowered, but he raises his hand and grasps one of the arms that protected her chest. Rey sputters until he releases her. “I’ve seen your breasts before,” he explains.

“W-well,” she snaps, “then you don’t need to see them _again_.”

Kylo holds the shirt above her, so that she must raise her arms and expose herself so that the shirt can fall over her arms and her head. 

Rey loosens, then wiggles out of the waist of her pants. He clucks his tongue and says to himself, “You’re so _small_...”

“Well you’re just _tall_ ,” Rey retorts. She crawls into bed on her hands and knees. Sinew hooks beneath her waist and lifts her bum into the air. She falls face-first onto the pillows with a yelp. Her waist is released.

Rey glances behind her to see him frozen behind her, his hands outstretched. A thrill runs down her back. She shakes her head and flips over onto her side. “Kylo, I’m alright,” she says, grinning.

He looks down at his hands. 

Rey rolls her eyes. She raises a thin foot and rolls the ball of her heel against his thick chest until she feels the bump of his nipple beneath his shirt. Kylo gently grasps her heel in his hands, and gazes at it appraisingly.

“Do you want to play tonight?”

“What?” Rey asks.

“Do you want to stretch,” Kylo says. To demonstrate, he braces his other hand on the top of her thigh, and slowly folds her knee towards her chest. 

“Oh,” Rey blurts out. Her lower back stretches, sends a railroad spike up the nodes of her spinal column. Kylo looms inches above her, watching intently. “ _Oh_ ,” she croaks. 

His chest rests on her folded leg, keeping her pinned down. Hold for five seconds. Release.

The second rep summons a dull ache. He rests his chin on her knee, watching her expressions through half-lidded eyes. Hold for five seconds. Release.

“It hurts less,” he notes.

Rey nods her head. He leans in, pinning her down with his weight. Hold for five seconds. Release.

“One more,” he says, leaning over her. Hold. Breath in, out. Release.

“Other leg,” he says. Rey stretches out her left leg, and offers him her right one. His thumb presses deep into the sole of her foot as he pushes her knee to her chest. He’s strong enough to break her ankle. Hold for five seconds. Release. 

She reaches up to grab the railings of the headboard. Her head is sliding up the pillow. He sings _good girl_ under his breath and leans in, hand rubbing the back of her thigh and pressing down on the back of her knee. Hold. Release.

“Last one.” 

The mattress sinks beneath his weight. Her lumbar stretches to accommodate, spine popping. Thin fingers and palms shudder against the brass rungs. Her breathing shallows. When she opens her eyes, she sees his: his long eyelashes, and the gold threaded in his iris. He leans in closer. Hold.

His nose nuzzles hers, just before the kiss. 

Remember to breath. In, out.

.

Tiny stars burst and fade away beneath her eyelids. Rey floats in perfect darkness, paper skin and matchstick bones

When she opens her eyes, the world is given definition. The static that she hears becomes a ragged breathing. She turns her head, and her chin rests against his soft head of hair. His large proboscis snuffles against her neck. Her fists unclench from the hot metal headboard — manacles unshackled — so that her arms wind around his neck. 

“Kylo.” He glances up at her, hair spilling over his wide eyes. “I - I feel like I’m _losing_ myself to you,” she confesses, brushing away the strands with her fingertips. “Everyone - the doctors, my friends - they think they understand me, but they _don’t_ -.”

Her throat constricts, eyes burning. She should stop; life is tough, boohoo, he doesn’t want to hear her whining and he probably has a wife and kid back in the real world -.

“I understand,” he replies.

Her fingers tangle in his hair, and she rests her palm over his wide ear. Kylo is still, his cheek cradled in the hollow of her chest. She feels a sudden drop in her stomach, because she’s suddenly realized that she’s known nothing this entire time, living in a bubble where only Rey matters. “Why do you help me?” she asks weakly.

When he speaks, his breath flutters against her chest, thinly protected by her shirt. “Because,” he says, “you are the only one in this world who will ever embrace me.” By his tone, this is a dry fact. Her thumb traces the shape of his ear.

“A lot of people could love you,” Rey hears herself say. “I...”

“I’ll never be able to repay you,” she blurts out. “I’m not-. I’m nothing _special_.”

The mattress squeals as he braces his hands to either side of her. He leans down. Her hands cup his face, just as his forehead comes to a rest against hers. She tumbles down, and down

“Rey.” Each word feathers against her cheek. “Make love to me.”

The belt snaps. Gears turn, but unfinished thoughts spill down into the void.

“That is what you could do, to repay me.” Hands settle on her thin waist. “That is all I want.”

Then it is all she wants, too.

.

It is the first time that she will choose to have sex. It won’t matter if it hurts, because she loves Kylo. 

“I’ve seen _this_ ,” he mutters. The shirt lifts upwards, and Rey holds the cotton ends in her fingers. His large hands grasp each of her breasts. Rey freezes, her shoulders tensing. His fingertips feel rough and warm

“I thought - I thought you — they’re _small_ ,” she stutters.

“You’re _very_ small,” he agrees. He kneads her breasts into two beads, before leaning down to kiss each one. The brush of his lips sends molten heat down to her stomach. She arches her back, ignoring the spike of pain this causes. Unseen fingertips drag down her waist, peeling the hem of her panties down her legs. “A mere _morsel_ ,” he insists. His tongue slips out and laps the underside of her breast, pink on rosy pink. Saliva glistens on his bottom lip. 

He moves over her, his mere presence heavy over her body. She tries to reach up, but her wrists are pinned to her sides, her raised shirt trapped in her fists. 

“Don’t struggle, don’t fret-“ Rey twists her neck, trying to find the pins holding her down “- you’re going to worry yourself to death,” he sighs.

— _I don’t want it to hurt I don’t want it to hurt_

His hand grips the back of her knee and hoists it to her chest, so her thigh brushes the raised tip of her nipple. Rey chokes. She just has to wait until it’s over.

Friction runs along her slit, making her flinch. He clicks his tongue, then something soft and wet circles around her bare breast. The friction comes again. It pushes insistently between her thighs, rubbing her folds. Her eyes are squeezed shut, but strange shapes flit along her vision. 

“ _What a pretty pussy_.” His lips move beside her ear, breathy. Hot. “Waited a long time for you to play.”

A hot liquid spills out over her sex. It feels incredible, makes her skin tingle where it touches, with every stroke of his cock. Her eye cracks open, and in the weak light of the room she can make out a shadow draped over her. Past her knee, she can make out the head of his penis thrusting against her. The sight and sensation overcome her; she comes with a whimper, over his unspent cock.

He huffs. She hears the click of his teeth, the wet sound of him swallowing saliva. 

“Other leg,” he growls. Rey raises her left leg, feels the sting at the base of her bric-a-brac spine. Sinew hooks around her narrow waist, his fingers digging into the thin layer of flesh. “You’ll be lucky if I don’t eat you whole,” he snaps, yanking her greedily beneath his body. 

“M’sorry,” Rey blurts out.

Three lines form between his eyebrows. The next moment: a smack. Flesh on her exposed cunt. Her body jolts like a puppet on strings. Kylo groans.

Another _smack_. Rey squeaks.

His lips pull taut over white teeth in a torturer’s smile. “So fucking _cute.”_ His tone drips saccharine from his drooling mouth. “Sing louder, little one — let the trash outside hear.”

“N-no!” Rey shakes her head, flustered. “ _Don’t do that_ , Kylo!”

“This?” Another smack. Her body trembles, learning to expect a new blow.

The gentle pressure returns in its stead. It’s thick, and hot, matching the long-suppressed memories flashing before her eyes. 

“So wet for me,” he mutters. “Never been this - _ngh_ \- easy.”

It hurts it hurts, she doesn’t want this but it’s too late he’s inside! 

His pale, bloated face emerges before her eyes. It smells like stale beers and sweat and cum and vomit and it’s like being stabbed inside. She’s being raped by a dead animal.

He hushes in her ear, nuzzling the line of her jaw. His other hand cups the back of her neck, turning her face towards him. 

“It’s only me,” he promises. Dark hair, dark eyes. A long nose, and a wide mouth. Not _Him_ , but another face that she knows very well, a kinder and lovelier face. 

Relief washes over her. She can feel him ease slowly inside of her, filling her up. Her walls contract tight around him, but more of that fluid sends waves of pleasure down to the tips of her dangling toes. 

“Look, little one,” he murmurs. He taps her jaw with a finger, drawing her away from that world of pure sensation. Between them is her thin tummy, but with a slight bulge. As she stares at it, he shifts his hips, and the bulge moves.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she wonders aloud.

When she glances up at him, his gaze is soft, almost proud. He raises a finger and presses the bump on her tummy. It’s too much — she squirms as fluid pushes out of her pussy, around his cock and trickles down to her anus. Her teeth scrape against her lower lip

“You were made just for me.”

Before she can register this, he retreats, before slamming his hilt inside of her. Rey cries. His hands grip the back of her thighs as he fucks her into the mattress. Lewd sounds fills her ears: his hips smacking into her bottom, the wet shucking sound when he pulls out before pistoning back in, and lastly her own mewling.

He pulls her by her hips and screams as his body pumps out the most of his seed into her. It’s beyond anything she should’ve ever known 

.

The light blinks on. At least, it’s brighter than what filters through the closed drapes, and the painted windows. For what it’s worth, Rey is inconceivably happy, because Kylo is beside her. 

He is doing the things he did when they first met: tugging at the ends of her hair, squeezing her arm, tugging her fingers. She raises her hand, and before he can pull away, she presses her smaller palm to his, and intertwines their fingers. 

He sighs through his nose. His Adam’s apple bobs, and he gives her a strange look, his face inches from her.

She shifts her hips, feeling an uncomfortable fullness around her abdomen. He’s still inside of her. Her now awake body squeezes around him, making her buck her hips to try to find a little relief.

Kylo makes an annoyed sound deep in his chest. “Please, little one. I’m an old man,” he croaks. “And I had no dinner because of you.”

Heat rises to her face. “ _You’re_ the one who’s stuck inside _me_ ,” she huffs. 

“... I would’ve pulled out, but you would’ve woken up.” He sighs through his nose, swiveling on the pillow. “And I do enjoy your beauty sleep.” He squeezes lightly on her hand, to which Rey pulls free and smacks his chest.

This is intoxicating: it feels like she isn’t a patient. That they’re together. “How long have you been such a pervert?”

He thinks for a moment. “At first sight.” Rey scoffs, before hooking her free leg over his waist. “It’s true. Emasciated, hairless girl-thing that you were.” 

“Stuff it.”

“As you wish,” he hums, running his palm along her rounded belly. Her skin flushes from the contact. This is the closest she’s ever been to anyone. And at any moment, this could all go away: her agnosia could turn him into a monster, or she could be locked away in an insane asylum, or he could simply disappear once he’s had her fill of her. And she couldn’t hold it against him. There is no fixing her. 

She curls her body against his, her head tucked beneath his neck. Her lips rest against his collar bone in an absent-minded kiss.

There is a tug on her scalp as thick fingers card through her hair. 

“You know,” he murmurs, “there’s no escaping me now, Rey.”


End file.
